South Africa: protests at Stellenbosch transgenic grapevine experiment
Groups say contamination risks are unacceptably high

As Grape previously reported, the first plantings of genetically modified grapevines into the South African vineyard were announced a few weeks ago by Stellenbosch University’s Institute for Wine Biotechnology (IWB). Now the African Centre for Biosafety and Earthlife Africa Ethekwini have called on the government to reject the Institute’s application to conduct its open-air field trials involving genetically modified (GM) vines.

The IWB’s Grapevine Biotechnology programme has thus far pursued its research into transgenic grapevine plants only in greenhouses and laboratories, and says it wants to conduct field trials to properly assess performance. The plan is to plant nearly a hectare of the vines on the University’s Welgevallen experimental farm on the outskirts of Stellenbosch.

The protesting groups say that ‘the risks of contamination of adjacent fertile grapevine varieties by the GM cultivars are unacceptably high’, and that they ‘threaten South Africa’s lucrative wine export market, especially to the European Union ... where consumers are still reeling from the recent contamination scandal involving illegal GM rice’.

The African Centre for Biosafety says it has assessed the IWB’s own risk assessment – which it descibes as ‘scanty’ – and that it ‘relies heavily on inconclusive, outdated and abandoned biosafety studies conducted in Germany by the Institute for Vine Breeding’. Those field trials of GM grapevines had, it further suggests, not run their full course, because the transgenic vines failed to offer resistance to fungal pests as hoped.

Vanessa Black of Earthlife Africa says that GM vines ‘do not work, are not needed, and place the environment and South Africa’s export markets at unnecessary risk’. The statement issued by the two environmentalist groups says that the the IWB ‘hopes to eventually produce GM grapes for use as food (table grapes) and wine from the Chardonnay grapes, but no indication has been given by the IWB of what the future intention of these particular field trials is, and the claimed purpose of the trial is “proof of concept” only’.

Whereas the university Insitute had said that the transgenic vines will be covered with nets ‘to prevent seed dispersal by birds or animals’, opponents of the programme say that ‘[t]he chances that adjacent grapevines of fertile varieties will be contaminated by these GM trials are extremely high’. ‘The Chardonnay berries contain 2-4 seeds per berry and seed dispersal is possible by humans and animals, notably birds. There is a possibility that animal exposure might occur after rain and storms where grape berries could drop to the ground and escape from the site in rain water’.

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